Thomas Rode Andersen and his wife Thilde Maarbjerg eat pretty much like their ancestors.

In the lands of Norsemen, gourmet food lovers are going back to their Viking roots.

An example lies on a plate at the Danish Michelin star awarded restaurant Kong Hans Kaelder. Actually, this is no caveman’s piece of dinner meat, although it definitely looks like one. A slice of root parsley filled with smoked bone marrow, onions and cepès mushrooms, covered with root parsley puree and served with oxtail juice would probably be a sought after dish in the old days too, and the resemblance to a typical primitive dinner is not accidental. This is as modern as it gets.

“Finally, the people of the Nordics have found a culinary identity,” Thomas Rode Andersen, grand chef at Kong Hans Kaelder said.

After falling in love with a much younger woman, Mr. Andersen changed his habits of battering, deep-frying and artificially enhancing the color and taste of his food to become healthier and “remain attractive for her.”

He decided to switch his diet to “what we’re supposed to eat,” meaning eating locally and organically produced meats and vegetables, and no sugar. Essentially, he decided to apply his new cooking habits to the Kong Hans Kaelder restaurant menu too, serving dishes like the caveman style-root parsley mentioned above to demanding palates in the Danish capital.

All over the Nordic countries, the trend of going “back to nature” has spread faster than the aroma of freshly baked bread. Norwegian food researcher at Nofima Einar Risvik explains that, at the end of the last century, chefs in the Nordics had an ailing confidence in their own food tradition, and they were desperate for change.

“They wanted to create their own distinctiveness,” Mr. Risvik said.

“The goal was to enter international food competitions and the restaurant world as something else than a copy of other countries’ food culture.”

This resulted in the founding of the New Nordic Cuisine Movement and the writing of a manifesto, focusing on promotion of Nordic products, local self-sufficiency and the use of ingredients that “are particularly excellent in our climates, landscapes and waters.” The Danish Michelin star awarded restaurant Noma was one of the first to apply these principles and was soon after named the world’s best restaurant. Soon, not only top restaurants picked up the trend.

At a small coffee place in the Finnish capital Helsinki called Johan&Nystrom, owner Pasi Kokko decided to replace the sweet and savory croissants, cookies and cinnamon buns with all-natural “raw” cakes, filled with local lingonberries, blueberries, raspberries, sea buckthorn, rhubarb, seeds, and nuts. The cakes are never heated up to more than 40 degrees Celsius and are both good for the environment and the ones who eat them.

“I hope that there will be more food like this in Helsinki,” Mr. Kokko said.

So far, the raw cake concept has been a huge success, and the café has even started arranging a twice-a-month buffet with local and vegetarian foods that tends to be sold out even weeks in advance.

“In our stressed times with constant multi-tasking, mediated lives with smart technology and consumption, there is a longing for authentic tastes,” said Ida Hult, a Swedish consumer insight specialist and ethnographer.

She said that a craving for authentic cultural heritage, health, national pride and an all-time high interest in food in general may have been the imperative reasons to why the “back to nature” trend has become so popular in the Nordic countries.

Jimmy Linus/Maaemo

A typical dish at the luxury restaurant Maaemo. Wild cantarelle mushrooms covered with blossoms from the Norwegian flora.

At another Michelin awarded restaurant, this time in the chilly Norwegian capital of Oslo, Esben Holmboe Bang and his eleven chefs at Maaemo, serve 15 extraordinary dishes made of local, seasonal and organic components to a maximum number of 26 guests every night.

“We want to have a close relationship to the commodities we serve, and we believe that our food should represent what you can find in the Norwegian soil,” Mr. Holmboe Bang said.

At Maaemo, the list of ingredients varies a lot, and Jerusalem artichoke, goose berries, birch leaves, the special Norwegian wild cod “Skrei”, chanterelles, and woodruff are just some of the commodities that are being used for the super exclusive Northern dishes.

Mr. Holmboe Bang is also aware of his responsibility to safeguard the food traditions that have been customs in Nordic kitchens for hundreds or even thousands of years. Therefore, he utilizes traditional conservation methods like pickling, drying, and salting to “get through the winter season, during which the commodity selection is considerably poorer.” Restaurant guests and reviewers have applauded his approach to Nordic foods, and the authentic methods and commodities used are a big part of creating what some have described as an “exceptional experience” at Maaemo.

“I would say the Nordic kitchen is currently at its highest level, and therefore it makes sense that it’s being recognized by the rest of the world,” Louise Byg Kongsholm, director of the Scandinavian trend institute Pej Gruppen said.

She said that the focus on regional products in fact is nothing new, but that it’s been taken to a new level with the New Nordic Cuisine. Actually, other countries and kitchens are “taking the trend to heart and developing their own regional versions of it,” Mrs. Kongsholm said.

Mr. Andersen said changing his approach to cooking has helped him please his wife at home and satisfy his guests at the restaurant. He believes that he still lives up to his job description “cook the best food you can, without even thinking about any kind of compromise.”

“Before, those words meant to me that I had to use ‘all means necessary’ in my cooking,” Mr. Andersen said.

“Today, I would say it means “cook the best of raw produces in a gentle way that makes it shine as what it is, as healthy and as tasty as possible, without compromising with the restaurant’s DNA.”

As for the Nordic cuisine, to go back to a more Viking style set of commodities and cooking traditions, seems to have had the desired effect. In the internationally renowned cooking competition Bocuse D’Or, the Nordic countries have now earned more medals than the food battalions France and Belgium altogether.

About Speakeasy

Speakeasy is a blog covering media, entertainment, celebrity and the arts. The publication is produced by Barbara Chai and Jonathan Welsh with contributions from the Wall Street Journal staff and others. Write to us at speakeasy@wsj.com or follow us on Twitter at @WSJSpeakeasy or individually @barbarachai.